Just wondering when was the last time you saw a butterfly, or a star, or even a cobbler. I seem to recall they all disappeared around the time Maruti 800s vanished from the streets. No, not suggesting a cause-effect here. Just an observation.
When the Maruti 800 went off the road, it was no ordinary event. The people’s car, in that sense the unifier that gave everyone an almost equal identity gave way to cars in multiple segments. Just around then bazaars and markets gave way to malls. Also Haldiram Halwai became Haldiram Restaurant company. Suddenly there was no unifier, no meeting ground. No place where the rich and the poor consumed the same product, the same brand. Even the common salt was no longer common.
But behind all this what really changed was the attitude of the affluent. While the poor were left to live by and uphold the learnings of the age of scarcity – to refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle, the rich were free to feast on a buffet of consumerism – on the latest phone, on the season’s fashion, on exotic holidays.
Today 125 (that’s right, just 125 people) of the world’s richest yield an annual average of three million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90 per cent of humanity. The planet cannot sustain the demands of our consumption anymore. It is reflecting in all three dimensions of sustainability around us – in social exclusion, climate change and economic turmoil.
Evidently it is time to live life a new way. Thankfully there is the SDG way which we have sampled during the pandemic – a simpler way of living.
These SDG musings are inspired by the teachings of the ancients. To break through this Chakravyuh of habit and desire so as to restore some joy to the planet.
